


Watercolors

by Xie



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-05
Updated: 2010-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-09 22:44:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xie/pseuds/Xie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post series Brian/Justin story, written for the "Hot and Steamy" challenge at InsaneJournal's qaf_scavenger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watercolors

Brian came into my studio just as I put the last brush in the rack to dry. "Hey."

He walked over to my canvas, and I went and stood next to him. "What do you think?"

Usually when I asked him that, he'd shrug and tell me it was all right. Sometimes he'd roll his eyes and tell me I was a genius. The best times, he'd just shake his head and then later that night, stare at me while we were fucking like he thought I was going to vanish in front of his eyes.

But that was when the painting he was looking at didn't suck, which unfortunately this one did.

"What do _you_ think?" he asked me, his voice patient.

I laughed. "I think it was done three hours ago, and yet, tragically, I kept working on it."

He snorted, but just said, "I'm going to bed."

Considering it was three in the morning, that seemed reasonable to me. "I'll be up in a minute."

I was halfway to the laundry room before I got my paint-covered t-shirt off, and I stood next to the washing machine and pulled off my jeans, too. It was cold in the kitchen, but I was hungry, so I hopped from one freezing foot to the other while I dug some leftover pizza out of the refrigerator. I ate it on my way up the stairs.

I could hear the shower running, and when I got into the bathroom, Brian was naked and still fucking around with the water temperature.

"Is that a hint or an invitation?" I asked him, laughing.

He just shrugged, but when I got near the door he lunged and dragged me in.

His fingers dug into my scalp, and I closed my eyes and felt the shampoo and hot water pouring over my face and down my body.

The water swirling around the drain was blue. My hands left blue smears on the glass shower wall, too, when I braced them there while he thrust inside me. His mouth was next to my ear, and I could hear laughter in his voice, in his moans.

He kissed me when my head fell back against him, his knees bent while my weight sagged into him. I felt his cock stretch me, push deeper, and I pressed my hands harder against the glass. "Brian… fuck… " and my come was mixing with the paint-tinged water, running down the glass and my legs, and covering his hand.

Then he was coming, hot bursts inside me, hotter than the water still pouring all over us, almost as hot as the bright pain that flared up where his teeth closed on the skin of my shoulder.

I leaned against him when we were done, feeling his hands working soap into the paint on my forearms and wrists, his chin resting on my head.

He was still scrubbing blue stains off the imported Italian marble tiles when I crawled into bed. I woke up a little bit when he lay down behind me, just long enough to feel him throw his arm across my waist and say something vaguely recriminatory about how much marble tile cost to re-grout.

"Hmmmmblghrrr," I mumbled. I guess it was the right thing to say, because he kissed my hair.

I fell asleep and dreamed about a painting, long stripes of blue so dark it was almost black, flecked with little bits of silver, not like glitter or quartz, but like the smooth edges of a nickel or the worn surface of our wedding rings. When I woke up in the morning, my hand felt stiff, like I'd been painting in my sleep.

"You over-did it last night," Brian said while he worked the stiffness out of my fingers with his.

"Yet another reason I should have stopped three hours earlier," I said, and then I laughed. "That feels good…"

"Oh, Christ." He rolled his eyes. "You're going back in there again, aren't you? You're fucking fixing the painting in your head. I can tell."

I kissed him. "Yes, dear." Then I yelped, because he'd pinched the web of skin between my thumb and my palm. "Hey!"

He went upstairs to get dressed, and I carried my coffee into the studio. Last night's painting was still on the easel, and I saw what I couldn't see the night before, every false brush stroke, every line that drew the eye to the wrong place.

I shoved it in the storage closet, and started to stretch a new canvas, twice its size.

Hours later – I didn't know how many, but it was dark out – I jumped when I heard Brian's voice at the door.

"Tell me you haven't been painting all day." He said it in a perfectly bland conversational tone. "And it's fine if you lie."

I shoved a hand through my hair, and knew from his tiny, almost imperceptible flinch that I must have smeared paint in it. "No, first I stretched a new canvas, then I had lunch, and then I painted all day." I grinned at him. "But I'll stop now."

I wiped my hands on my jeans before I kissed him. His mouth tasted like coffee and just a little bit like the Liberty Diner's french fries. He kissed me back for a long time.

I pulled away, and pretended not to notice the paint on the front of his shirt. "I should shower."

He started to say something, and I put my hand over his mouth. It left a little black mark on his lip, but I didn't tell him. "I'll use the downstairs shower," I said.

The water running down my legs and arms was tinged with black and silver paint, a soapy iridescent gray that vanished into the drain and didn't leave even a trace on the black tile under my feet.

And when I heard Brian come through the bathroom door, this time it was me who pulled him into the water.


End file.
